Seattle: Melanie Troxel Saturday notes

Troxel's best thousand-foot time puts here eighth overall
SEATTLE, July 19, 2008 -- The sun, absent from Friday's opening
qualifying rounds, returned to Pacific Raceways Saturday and slowed
elapsed times. But it didn't make any difference to...

Troxel's best thousand-foot time puts here eighth overall

SEATTLE, July 19, 2008 -- The sun, absent from Friday's opening
qualifying rounds, returned to Pacific Raceways Saturday and slowed
elapsed times. But it didn't make any difference to Melanie Troxel and
the Gotham City Racing Dodge Charger R/T Funny Car team. They stayed
eighth over all and she races Tony Pedregon in Sunday's opening round of
the Schuck's Auto Supply.

Troxel's Friday times were 4.109 and 4.096 seconds and she added runs of
5.846 and 4.182 seconds on Saturday. Pedregon qualified ninth, 4.098
seconds.

The good opening-day performance enabled crew chief Brian Corradi to use
the third qualifying run to test.
"I've had a blower and some clutch parts I wanted try and that was the
perfect time to do it," Corradi said of the weekend's slowest run. "We
came real close to making a good run and we did learn some things.
Making the top 10 is our ultimate goal and being able to test parts will
help us get there."

Troxel, meanwhile, was happy to make laps in both conditions.

"I think when we come out for first round tomorrow we are going to have
the cloudy conditions in the morning and then it's going to burn off and
be like it was for both passes today. We've had some experience in each
of those situations. We tried something on the first pass this morning.
That's the benefit of making two good runs on Friday. You feel
comfortable trying something different.

"We put everything back where it was and we feel fairly confident about
our last run. It was a good one on a pretty hot race track in the same
kind of conditions we're probably going to see tomorrow."

Starting in the top half of the field is a good thing, too, added Troxel,
"because you get lane choice. But, at the same time, being at the top of
the field hasn't really been that good to me. Even going back to my
dragster days, I've tended to do better from the bottom half of the
field."

"I know the crew chiefs like to have lane choice and to be a little bit
higher in the qualifying position but, as a driver, I'm good from
wherever we race. Everybody has a shot on Sunday."